Here are five reasons the foie gras ban in California is super-stupid. Duck death before dishonor, my fellow foodies:
5. Chefs can be whiny, self-serving bitches.And now we all get to hear some of them whine about this for a while -- at least until they find something else to whine about. Apparently there comes a point when you've spent so much time in the kitchen/on a TV studio set/in a kitchen on a TV studio set that you start to lose perspective, begin force-feeding yourself your own hype, and hyper-focus on seriously minuscule issues like foie gras -- or just use the controversy to help yourself to free press.
If you are Top Chef's Nyesha Arrington, you'll hold an anti-ban dinner to help set you apart from the horde of other Top Chef-lings; if you are Chris Cosentino -- chef and co-owner of San Francisco's Incanto -- you will be a drama queen and take stuff that animal activists say about you way too seriously, and if you are Wolfgang Puck, you vocally oppose the use of fatty liver so that you can convince yourself and anyone else who will listen that you are still relevant even though it isn't 1997 anymore.
4. There are bigger culinary crimes to decry.
There are factory-farmed cows, disease-ridden poultry, Monsanto doing whatever hippies say they are doing to f*ck over the human race this week, starving children in Africa/Texas/the City of Denver, and more recent food recalls than you can shake a huge, filthy stick at. So why does prohibiting a few well-heeled chefs from serving expensive liver and ban-hammering the one percenters in one state from getting their liver get everyone in such a kerfuffle?
3. There is still foie gras available that isn't force-fed.There is a Spanish producer of foie gras, Pateria de Sousa, that produces foie without gavage by basically encouraging the fowl to stuff themselves. In the fall, during the birds' natural cycle of loading up for the flight south, Pateria de Sousa offers them large amounts of tasty food like acorns and olives, which causes them to overeat and produces enlarged livers, ready for harvest. This "ethical foie gras" is smaller than the force-fed varieties and costs more, but it's said to be just as flavorful as the gavage-based liver.
2. Geese and ducks are assh*les.
David Kinch, chef at Manresa in Los Gatos, California, who opposes the ban, isn't a fan of geese, and told the New York Times that "They are the nastiest animals on the planet" and "They are guard dogs in France."
I agree. Geese are jerks, and so are ducks. They eat whatever they want, including Legos, as I discovered growing up; they take dumps whenever and wherever they feel like it; and they are violent, unpredictable and anti-social. I've never had the opportunity to shove a feeding tube down a goose or duck's throat, but I've met quite a few of the foul fowls that I would gladly violate if I wasn't in fear of them biting off my digits in retaliation.
1. The people this ban will affect are affluent enough to get "real" foie gras elsewhere.
Rich people sure do complain when they are denied access to something. If they want foie gras so badly, what's stopping them from hopping a plane, flying to another state, going to a restaurant and ordering as much fatty liver as they want to jam in their gullets -- be it grilled, pate-d, sautéed or wiggly-raw?
Nothing.
Nothing at all is stopping them from doing this. And I bet your rumba panties that they sure will, so do the rest of us who eat foie gras once in a while -- or never -- really need to listen to the bougie sob-fest?
